The Housewarming Party
by NoLogique
Summary: After graduating from Hogwarts, Draco and Harry move into a flat together in London, but sometimes romance is not as simple as it seems.
1. Chapter 1

1

Draco Malfoy stepped back from ther old building and looked up at the fifth story window.

He shouted, "Potter, you cunt; stick your head out here, will you?" He winced as a truck shuddered down the alley, tearing up the weeds growing along the rusty fence. "Holy bloody Christ, it's cold out."

The weather liked to punctuate his agonies, this time whipping up a gale around him, sending orange fluttering leaves into the sky. The wind was chilly and uncompromising. London could be unforgiving this time of year, and this neighborhood especially. No living in Wandsworth for them, no; it had to be he and Harry playing like lads in a run-down tenement covered in graffiti.

Only right now, cheer up, he told himself; the slumming will end the moment the Ministry stopped being tits and gave him and Harry jobs. Harry's nest egg would let them run unemployed for the next few months, sure, but with Draco's dad blacklisted, and Draco himself blacklisted, it would be hard to swing it with any respectable types for the next bit.

Up above the fire escape, the horrid rusty back door opened with a creak, and Harry appeared, almost poking out his eyes by the tree growing up the side of the brick. "Give it a rest, will you, Malfoy," he said, tossing his scarf back around his shoulder and grinning. "Barking up a storm out here 'stead of carrying up the luggage, are we?"

"I've never carried anything in my life," Draco snapped. "If we have to Muggle it up like a couple of jerkoffs, you better come unlock the door, or I'll make your life a nightmare."

"Oh you will, will you? That'll be pretty hard, seeing as I got the keys, and I'm up here."

"I'll throttle you, don't think I won't. There're football types out here eyeing me, looking like they're going to club me into the dirt."

"You could use a good clubbing."

"Get down here or I'll take off and leave you with half the rent biting you bare. How about that, sunshine? Get down here."

"How you whine. All right, keep your robe on."

Harry swung back into the tiny flat, the cruddy wooden planks creaking as he went, grabbing for his coat. The living room had one window looking out into the old tree, and another so close to the opposite building they could probably play hopscotch between them. Heading down the stairs, he breathed in the smell of stale cigarettes and gin, and felt the cold ebbing in the closer he got to the security door. He should've taken off, maybe, yeah, should've taken that teaching position offered at Beauxbatons instead of living the bohemian life with his lover.

Maybe they should be living apart, he thought; it was always good for a guy to have his space, but now it was too late for that sort of talk, wasn't it, Potter? The Boy Who Lived, and what, a crummy flat south of the river near the rouger areas of Brixton. It was, of course, only until they could get better jobs, and--

And, yeah, Malfoy wasn't kidding so much about the football hooligans. Draco was a sharp, thin fence pole compared to these bruisers hanging out across the way, but they couldnt care less about the scowling blonde ponce.

"_Muggles_," he muttered, shoving past Harry into the stairwell.

"You're thick," Harry said, shutting the door. "Probably just the neighbours. Maybe we should introduce ourselves, yeah?"

"That;d be a sight, wouldn't it, Potter? The Quidditch loonie jawing about Manchester U, would that be it?"

"Where're your bags?"

"Outside."

"You expecting the help to bring them up, then, are you?"

"Well, who else would--" He paused, and turned sharply on the stairs to stare at Harry, a look of dawning anguish creeping onto his face. Bitterly, he said, "Here I am forgetting we're roughing it, Potter."

"Go get your bags, Malfoy; I'll make sure the hoodlums don't snatch you."

2

The journalist introduces himself as Mr. Mackey, a scribbler for the Diagon Alley-based zine. Draco asks if he could smoke during the interview and Mr. Mackey grimaces, and shakes his head, pointing out that they're in a public building, and hoping that this isn't a dealbreaker for Mr. Malfoy.

But no, Draco Malfoy simply leans back in the small uncomfortable chair and looks around the dark room, his lips seemingly frozen in a permanent frown of distaste. Mr. Mackey notes that this guy's probably been through a ton of interviews already, for bigger and better papers. He takes a moment to collect himself, slips out his wand and taps his bronze gnome-built voice recorder. "_Recordiari!_"

Draco Malfoy looks at him, looking young and dapper and made from old-money. He looks expectant rather than impatient, and this gives Mr. Mackey some encouragement. Mr. Mackey gives out a little, warm chuckle and says, "As of right now, Mr. Malfoy, Mrs. Rowling's biography of Harry Potter is fast becoming one of the biggest sellers in the world, in the Muggle _and_ Wizard markets. What do you think about this?"

"Have you read the book?"

"Hm? Oh. Yes I have."

Draco looks away, out the dingy window on the side of stone wall, looking out onto the street-level of Diagon Alley. "I think her portrayal of me was more than a sight unforgiving."

"But you did do and say those things?"

"Some of them, yeah." Draco looks back at Mr. Mackey, and for a moment Mr. Mackey's throat clenches in fright; this rich puke had been, after all, close to He Who Must Not Be Named, and had, in fact, almost murdered the late Albus Dumbledore. Draco's fingers twitch, like they're searching for a cigarette. "I think," he says, "that she made me into an old cartoon villain, really. _Have_ you read that book? Apparently my every waking thought was directed around doing evil."

"Perhaps to contrast you with Harry Potter?"

"The Wizarding World has no libel laws. As you probably know."

Mr. Mackey remembers how the Daily Prophet famously skewered Harry Potter a few years back. But, Mr. Mackey thinks, this is _Britain_, this is _England_. If the papers had no freedom here, there went everyone's liberties, and then where would everyone be?

"It's been quite impossible for me to find suitable employment because of it," Draco adds. "Everyone reads this book and thinks I'm a horrid little Death Eater."

"But weren't you?"

"I was _sixteen _when my parents wanted me to join. How's that for awful parenting? You're sixteen and your parents want you to be their little messiah for their wizard apocalypse. I admit that means I've got some issues to work out now, yeah, but people read that book and that's who I am to them."

"What do you think about the huge response when it came out that you and Mr. Potter were lovers?"

"Huge response? You mean those stories they were writing?"

"The fanfiction, yes."

"Have you ever read _those?_"

"One or two."

"They're ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous. Harry and me-- which have you read? -- no, no, they're absolutely ludicrous. In every one, it's like Harry and me are fifteen year old girls, just giggling and doing each other's hair. It's like, no I'm not fifteen any more and even when I was, I was never that much of a fairy."

"Do you and Mr. Potter stay in contact with the other two members of what the fans call the Big Three or the Harry Potter trio?"

"Ron and Hermione?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, yes."

"Weasley and Granger... I was _at_ their wedding, but it still doesn't seem real to me. Of course we still see them; they're Potter's best friends."

"Do they have any animosity towards you?"

"Well..." Again, that furtive moving of the hands, as if he isn't uncomfortable without a cigarette, something to use as a prop, to sit back and wave around while he thought. "Well, I'm not sure. I went to the wedding as Potter's guest; _I_ wasn't invited. And, you read the book, I was a bit of a bully to them when we were kids. Not sure if they've forgiven me yet."

"Fans speculate on how well the marriage is going."

Draco gives out a strange, ugly laugh, which transforms into a biting, almost malicious chuckle. "Yeah, well--" He leans back, smiling, as if thinking about a private joke. "Let them speculate."

3

Hermione's eyes snapped open when she heard her husband call her name. She saw the ceiling fan, and the white-speckle ceiling of their bedroom. They were, of course, in the house her parents bought them. ("_I know you two could probably just magic one out of thin air," her dad had said at the reception, "but we wanted to get you one anyways."_)

Ginny, who was now her sister-in-law, was sitting by the bed, looking prim and professional. The room was a mess, which Hermione hated, hated, _hated_. But Ron hadn't been cleaning much, but she never felt up to it anymore. She looked over wildly at Ginny and said, "Why? Why is he calling me?"

He called her again, from downstairs, probably in the kitchen. How could Ron be so absent-minded? "It's like he forgets I'm pregnant," she said.

Seven months pregnant with little Rose, who was now big enough to make it hard to get around, to make it hard to clean, to make it impossible to work. Why is he calling me? she thought; it's like he wants me to go crazy. It's like he wants me to kill him.

Ginny stood up, looking tall and beautiful and thin (_thin_, good Christ, Hermione could barely remember what it was like to be _thin, _without a huge baby sticking out of your stomach), and crossed over out of the bedroom and stood by the landing and screamed, "What the _hell_ do you want, Ron?"

Hermione knew Ron would appear at the bottom of the stairs, looking sheepish and frightened, remembering just then that his wife couldn't come down and solve all his problems for him. How could a man excel at his job and yet come home and have his brain fall apart? _Well_, a hideous horrible voice rose up to say, _you're quite the opposite, aren't you, Hermione? You're a right genius at school and around your friends, but you're a bit of a fuck-up when it comes to your career, aren't you?_

She silenced that voice with anger, knowing that it meant regret, and she couldn't allow regret, couldn't let herself regret marrying so young, couldn't let herself regret becoming a mother of a child who would be so beautiful. And the maternal leave meant she couldn't get sacked by her stern supervisors, who couldn't care less about her superb memory and workmanship, and cared more about the fact she had trouble meeting deadlines.

"What does he _want_, Ginny?" she asked.

"He wants to know what to do with the dog. I told him to crate her. Why wouldn't he think of that himself?"

Hermione shrugged hugely. She pushed herself up and swung her legs around the side of the bed. She told herself she was looking forward to tonight, to the housewarming party at Harry's. But she hated going out like this. She knew she was overreacting, of course, because when she looked in the mirror, all she could see was a young, bright eyed pregnant woman, with perhaps too big a nose, and unruly hair, but with a nice shirt and skirt that both fit. But in her head all she could see was a huge splotchy fertility figure, turned into some horrible fat idea of Mother by the thing inside her. She was going to cease being herself when Rose was born. She was going to become one of those big dumpy women you saw pushing their children into the shops, made more mother than woman. She had the sudden urge to either throw up or cry, but she did neither.

Ginny was talking to her. Hermione looked up and said, "Hm? Sorry, Ginny?"

"Are we all piling into your car or should I take mine too?"

Herminone felt tears springing to her eyes. That was it then. So much for vibrant youth. She and Ron were going to become middle-aged before their time. Harry, Draco and Ginny could spring out of the party and go to a club or a bar and light up the city with their vitality. She and Ron would have to say their goodbyes and retire to their nice suburban home to grow old.

But of course she was overreacting, but she couldn't stop these thoughts from coming.

"Both cars, I should think," she forced herself to say. "In case it goes very late."

4

Ginny parked her car next to Hermione's and tried to gird herself for tonight. It was the old jealousy rearing its ugly head, forming like a lump in her stomach and pushing outwards, making her ache. She forced herself to realize that she couldn't feel inadequate. Draco Malfoy was a disgraced, old-money emotional basket case, unemployed and feeding off Harry's savings. Ginny, however, was settled and solid, Assistant to the Chief of Security in the Ministry, upwardly mobile, competent, polished. She should never let herself feel inadequate when it came to losing Harry to Malfoy. And holy god, Ginny, she thought; maybe you should give up that old torch. Hardly anyone ended up with their Hogwarts sweetheart. And she knew she'd have to work on her own relationship issues before anything else. If she couldn't make other men stick around, how could she ever hope to nab her friend the Boy Who Lived? She knew it was a reaction to life growing up with her mother; years of watching her mother force herself into the traditional domestic role had made Ginny overly controlling and overbearing with men, in order to resist that same role. In her need to be not like her mother, she ended up alienating everyone she dated. Sometimes she wondered if Harry hadn't been better off in being without parents to mess him up.

Shouldn't have thought that, she thought, as she got out of the car and dropped her keys in her purse.

Harry was waiting for her at the foot of this ugly old stone building, looking wild-haired and plain. Here he was in ratty old jeans and a sweater. Draco would be decked out in a black-on-black tailored suit. What did Harry see in him? But that didn't matter to Ginny, who could only smile and kiss Harry's cheek and ask how he was. She was taller than him these days, but not _too_ much taller, she thought. And anyways, Draco was a little taller too, so maybe Harry liked the tall ones.

"Good to see you again, Harry," she said.

"Yeah, definitely," he said, grinning widely. "How's work?"

"Busy, very busy." Her smile faltered a little. She wondered if that was a sore point for him, with the Ministry busy blocking jobs for him, wanting him out of the force and into the role of a symbol. "Is Neville coming tonight?"

"He can't make it." He shrugged. "He's off in America right now, doing book tours."

Neville had written his own, Wizarding-world-only biography, and it was doing only slightly less on the market than Rowling's juggernaut. They rarely saw him these days because of it.

"This your new place, then?" she asked.

"It's even better inside."

Ron appeared around the alley, his tall frame silhouetted against the chain-link fence. He screamed Harry's name, and that was it, the two best mates were united once more, hugging and clapping each other on the back. Ginny had always felt left out of the trio, and felt it acutely when Hermione arrived, and the hugs and hellos continued in earnest, with Harry excitedly talking about Rose and Hermione starting up a chatter about how Harry was going to be the godfather, et cetera et cetera. At least, thought Ginny; both she and Draco were outsiders. Not even Harry's lover could penetrate the binding friendships these three had had.

"Hermione!" Harry was saying. "How's everything going with the new house, and the baby?"

Hermione smiled brightly at him. "Everything's grand," she said.

5

Mr. Mackey feels flustered, and finds it hard to keep eye contact with the bewilderingly good natured Harry Potter sitting opposite him in the cafe. The cafe itself is a colourful one on a French-influenced part of Diagon Alley, and there are two Indian girls at the next table who keep looking back at them, smiling attractively. Mr. Mackey feels, for a moment, part of the celebrity surrounding the Boy Who Lived. The cafe is a direct contrast to the dank and dark cellar Mr. Mackey had interviewed Draco Malfoy, and the coffee is excellent.

"First of all, Mr. Potter," he says, loud enough so that other people in the cafe realize who he's with and what he's doing, "I'd like to take this time to thank you for doing this interview with me."

"Oh." Harry Potter blinks and smiles disarmingly, and even though he's done hundreds of interviews before, seems, like always, surprised and dismissive about all the attention, "it's honestly not a problem, yeah, and really, I'm not really doing much else, am I?"

"I wanted to discuss that, Mr. Potter. What are your feelings on the Ministry's continued effort of blocking your acceptance into the Aurors, despite the force going on record saying they'd be eager to have you?"

"I think it's just a matter of time. I guess they just need to realize that I don't want to be their figurehead. They want me to take a patronage job and be in the papers everytime the Ministry wants to talk to the people, but that's not really my thing. I want to be down in the mud, nabbing baddies, you know?"

Mr. Mackey smiles, even though he knows this is basically a summary of what Harry Potter had told the Daily Prophet and a hundred other rags. He says, "Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, your best friends and accomplices in saving the Wizarding World, have been in and out of the gossip mags for the past few months. What are your thoughts on their marriage?"

"It was a very beautiful wedding."

"I mean, some people have criticized the young couple for getting married too young."

"Well, I guess, when you've found the one, you've found the one, yeah?"

"So the marriage is going well, then?"

"Oh yeah." Harry Potter smiles. "They're doing great."

6

"It's been real awful, Harry," Ron confided in a low voice, when he and Harry were in the kitchen alone. "Just the past few months she's been leaping down my throat no matter what I do."

Harry tried to smile. "How's that any different from usual?"

Ron didn't laugh. He looked miserable. "I'm being serious. I feel helpless."

Harry peeked out the kitchen at the living room, seeing that Draco was playing the part of the gentleman, entertaining the ladies while Harry and Ron were getting the drinks ready. "I'm sorry, Ron; didn't mean to make a joke out of it."

"I'm starting to think Hermione might not be too happy about the baby. Oh, I don't know. I guess things've just been hectic, yeah? But I work like a dog at the job and then I come home to a wife who's ready to take the piss out of me."

"Maybe she misses work."

"Oh, she _hates_ her job. I figured she'd love to have some time to sit around and get her reading done. Now we're fighting all the time."

"You guys fought all the time at Hogwarts, didn't you? Figured it was just a part of your dynamic."

"I dunno."

"Are you having second thoughts about the marriage?"

"What? No, of _course_ not. Hermione asked me once if she thought we were too young, but of course not. Mum and Dad got married at my age, didn't they? They had Bill early, didn't they?"

"I suppose they did."

Ron turned to him and looked dour. Harry gripped his shoulder and squeezed and told him it'll be all right. He figured it was the pregnancy that was stressing Hermione out, and when he said that Ron looked like he wanted to say something, but then thought better of it. That surprised Harry. Three months alone in a tent out in the middle of a winter wilderness had pretty much made the trio pretty open about everything to each other. Rowling, in her biography, had chosen to gloss over these months, forgetting just how much a thing like that tested a friendship. Harry was about to ask Ron what was on his mind when Draco appeared at the doorway and asked if it wasn't any trouble, if they were finished being slow lazy gits, if they could bring the drinks out.

"Hold your horses, sunshine," Harry said. "You'll trip and the stick will break off and then where will your arse be?"

Draco smirked and vanished.

Harry didn't like that Ron felt he couldn't tell him something. Ron had even brought up the gay thing a while back, with Hermione and Harry over a couple of beers at a bar. It had been a real American-style sports bar, some franchise from across the Atlantic, with women in tight black pants behind the bar, and televisions overhead showing stuff like baseball and American football, none of which Harry or Ron had cared about; they'd just wanted some beer and the place had been close. Ron had told him he'd felt insulted.

"Insulted?" Harry had asked. "But why?"

"We're best mates!" Ron had slurred, already a little high off three pints. "Thick and thin and all that! Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"That you were playing the boys team, you git!"

"Oh, that. Well. I didn't really know it myself, yeah, so if I _had_ known, well-- wait, fuck no, _sod_ that, I was a bewildered abused child with grown-ups trying to murder me in a traditional boarding school so old-fashioned the stairs to the girl's dorm were designed to cause bodily harm if boys tried to go into them after dark. No _way_ any bloke could out himself in an environment like that."

Ron had thought for a moment, and then nodded.

"Still though," Hermione added, "I'm surprised no one saw it coming."

"Whatya mean?" Harry and Ron had asked.

"Well, in his entire stay at Hogwarts, Harry's entire romantic life consisted of a brief date with Cho Chang, who is as emotionally unstable today as she was then, and then a couple times snogging with your sister."

"What," Ron said, "you saying my sister wasn't enough to keep him straight?"

"You mean Ginny, the girl with whom he had so much masculine camaraderie with up until he kissed her? The girl who would never ever threaten him emotionally? That girl?"

"Jerk. Okay, but why _Malfoy?_ I thought we hated Malfoy."

"Yes," Hermione had agreed. "I'm a little confused on _that_ point."

Harry nodded and agreed with them; it _was_ weird. But Malfoy had just felt right, and Hate, with all its obsession and its intensity, was so similar to Love, that it took very little to edge it over.

Harry hadn't been offended by Ron's bluntness then, and he was a little disconcerted now to find Ron unable to tell him something. He grabbed the drinks from the counter and moved out into the living room.

"Is Luna coming, Harry?" Hermione asked, looking up.

"We invited her," Harry said. "But you know Luna. Either she'll show or we'll get a phone call tomorrow apologizing."

Christ, listen to yourself, he thought; the lexicon of the couple. _We_ invited her, _we, we, we_. The absorption of the one into the double. This is what happened when you lived with your lover.

Draco accepted his drink with an expression on his face that Harry knew well. Draco was bored, but he was trying to hide it behind a neutral smile, a smile ready to chuckle at Hermione or Ron's jokes. Harry's heart went out to him; few of Draco's friends lived in London anymore, many whose families had thrown it in with the Death Eaters, and who had to tactfully withdrawl when the regime had failed. Those remaining in the city probably wouldn't care to hang with Potter and his friends. Still, it was sometimes Draco's fault in the way he treated people that threw up a wall between he and them, sometimes wielding his posher accent and his privileged upbringing as a weapon. He had grown up doing that and now it was probably impossible for him to train it out of himself. What worked for you as a child became a liability as an adult.

But this was nice. Settling himself down in a ratty couch next to Draco, Harry was aware that things were okay, and he had a moment where he could recapture the cosiness of those nights in Hogwarts with friends, when everything was all right. His friends were talking and joking again, Ron and Hermione looking like they'd forgotten their problems for the moment, and Ginny looking animated, answering his questions about her job. Draco mentioned having a fag, but in a rare show of politeness, went over to open a window to do it.

He went to open the window and something smashed through the window next to it. Glass sprayed the coffee table, and something landed across the floor, bursting into flames.

Draco recognized it immediately: it was Greek Fire in a Bag, a weapon made by dwarves, banned in most countries. If it was on fire, it meant they only had a few second before it burst and covered them all in liquid flames.

Good old Ron Weasley: he was the fastest, it seemed, his wand materializing from somewhere Draco couldn't see. "_Defua!_" Ron shouted, aiming with his wand.

The weapon stopped smoking and dried up immediately and crumbling apart like ash. But holy god, there was Harry Potter, already moving from the couch and over the coffee table. He threw his cup hard through what was left of the glass in the shattered window and hurled himself out into the night. Of course, thought Draco; there went Potter the hero. A lifetime of danger had made him oversensitive to it, and now he did things like throw himself through windows to attack would-be assassins. Maybe it was this sort of shit thing made the Ministry want Potter to steer clear of the Aurors. It was sort of a Darwin thing too; that kind of recklessness made him The Boy Who Won't Live to Pass On His Genes.

But there was Ginny too, up and standing, her eyes searching the window with a frightening intensity. Of course; the Weasley girl and Harry had been so alike in that way, hadn't they, both with a need to form their lives around swashbuckling displays of bravado. Draco knew that only the high-heels Ginny wore prevented her from shooting out into the night like Harry.

It was getting a little chilly out, so Draco grabbed his coat, and went to the door. He glanced back and saw Ginny doing the same. Beyond, he saw Ron tending to Hermione. He felt a swell of affection for the Weasley snot: in the face of violence, he remained the devoted husband and father.

Outside, Harry hit the roof of the building opposite, old shingles flying up around him. Up ahead, he saw her-- in the light of the streetlamps, he could see distinctly female features flashing into view beneath a hooded cloak. She shot a spell out at him, something no doubt intended to be brutal, but Harry snapped it away from a flick of his wrist and his wand. He was already moving, rushing up the side of the rooftop, feeling the cold and the adrenaline crushing him down into something efficient and quick, burning away all unnecessary baggage. The assassin had no intention of running; she was moving to the side, lifting her wand. He was ready for her.

He felt almost a stab of disappointment, up here in the full light of the moon. She wasn't all that skilled at what she did, and that made him upset; it meant his evening had been ruined by the efforts of someone who was an amateur. It felt like a waste.

Her spell was so misaimed that he didn't even have to knock it aside; he ducked it, feeling something shoot past his hair. He quietly Stunned her with a muttered, "_Stupify._" The spell struck her dead-center, and she toppled forward, slowly enough that he had time to catch her.

He felt as if he was too big for his skin, as if his very existence was attempting to escape. Here, now, he had tasted a grasp of what it meant to be alive, to have survived the horror of his last year at Hogwarts. For a moment, he realized how effortlessly he had assumed that his life had ended there, that the rest of his life would go on as a denoument that would never make up for what he had suffered before. Life didn't end when you survived, he thought; survival is a full time job.

Draco and Ginny were waiting for him beneath by the time he'd carried the girl down the fire escape to the street level. Ginny had called the Aurors with the Ministry crystal, but she watched with surprise with how focused and coordinated Harry and Draco were when they set the girl up against the wall and took out their wands.

"Tattoo, Potter," Draco said, pulling the girl's sleeves up.

It wasn't the Dark Mark, but it was still a tattoo that gurgled and writhed against the girl's skin, that of a bloodied hand.

"Who do you work for?" Harry asked.

The girl glared at him and hissed, "The Red Hand has you in its sights, Harry Potter!"

Ginny thought she couldn't have been more than nineteen. Dark wizards usually got them young, but she hadn't heard of any such group as the Red Hand. But, in the wake of Voldemort's defeat, there had been several groups cropping up around Britain, looking to fill the void.

There was a moment, during their interrogation, when Harry and Draco looked up at each other, and Ginny suddenly realized it. Of _course_ Harry and Draco had ended up together. They were direct contrasts, in look, in personality, in background. She looked at the way Draco was perched, straight and elegant, cigarette smoking between two long fingers. Harry was hunched a little, as if crushed by his own intensity, his hair ruffled, breathing hard. Yin and yang, total compliments. It only made artistic sense for them to have a romance. Rivals, enemies, and finally lovers. It was poetic. Ginny felt deflated, pushed aside. It was if destiny had brought them together. But how long could they sustain it? Long-term relationships were not built on artistic compliment. How long would long-faced Draco, spoiled and elegant, be able to put up with messy, good-natured Harry, and vice versa?

Two Aurors Apparated next to her, and they took control of the situation.

7

Hermione was quiet on the ride home, and that suited Ron. He sat in the passenger seat, feeling mixed emotions, feeling proud of himself for saving all of their lives (which explained why Hermione smiled at him whenever she took her eyes off the road), but as he had learned the hard way at Hogwarts, survival didn't solve your life problems.

He just wasn't sure what the birth of Rose would do to his marriage. He felt caught between the two of them, between his intense love for Hermione, and his intense love for Rose. He wanted to be a father, couldn't _wait _to be a father, but he kept sensing a certain reluctance in Hermione, as if her giving birth to Rose would lose her something, rather than make her gain. And he wasn't sure how Hermione would be act as a mother. He knew he could try to take up the slack as a father, but Hermione was so intellectual, and so exasperated with those intellectually weaker than her; would she be exasperated with her daughter? What if Rose _wasn't_ as smart as Hermione? Would Hermione still adore her? Or would Rose become a burden, dragging Hermione away from academic pursuits? It bothered him. He hadn't learned to feed off conflict and trouble the way Harry had.

He reached over and took Hermione's hand. She squeezed his and smiled at him again, the first sincere smile she had given him in a while. Even when he was worried about her, he still took strength from her touch. He leaned over, kissed her hand and leaned back in his seat, to quietly wait out the drive home.

8

Harry was strangely quiet that night, making drinks in the kitchen, moving into the living room, sitting down, moving back into the kitchen. He and Draco had methodically cleaned the glass off of the floor, answered the Auror's questions, gave autographs to the youngest of the two, and settled in for the night. Draco was sitting in the dark bedroom, feeling loose and easy from the drinks, smoking his cigarette lightly. He was thinking about the way Harry had sprang up off the couch and out the window so quickly and easily, as if it had simply been a flexing of a muscle. The fight with the girl had really charged him, but he had come down instantly in mood the moment he had gone back into the apartment, quietening down and barely responding to Draco's attempts at conversation.

Draco stabbed out the cigarette and groped in the darkness for his glass. No luck: his drink was gone, so he stood and moved through the velvety darkness of the flat, where he heard the sound of Harry's tears from the kitchen.

He stopped, mouth open, hearing the jagged sound. Setting the glass down, he approached the doorframe, and saw Harry. He had obviously collapsed when the sobbing started, legs giving out, and now he was sitting against the cupboard, heaving into his arm, the kind of violent crying that made other people beg you to stop, made Draco want to beg him to stop.

This was the truth of Harry Potter, here, now, in this kitchen, staring Draco right in the face. The heroic, genial face of the Boy Who Lived, who saw Voldemort dead with a smile, was the lie. Here the future of their relationship was manifesting itself here and now with this young man on the ground, crying. No, no, Draco wanted to say; don't do this, if you do this, there's no going back, because if you do this, this is _you_ and I'll be unable to forget it, I'll be unable to know the truth.

"Harry," Draco said softly, kneeling beside him.

"Oh Jesus," Harry said, leaning against Draco. "Jesus, I miss them so much. I miss them _so much--_"

This was the truth. This was the damage all those deaths had done to Harry Potter, and how could a child grow up into a healthy man when everyone he loved and trusted and looked up to died around him. The truth was that Harry Potter was a man damaged by his childhood, creating a man with the kind of abandonment issues that couldn't go away over night, and created the kind of emptiness that Draco knew he could never _ever_ fill, or fix.

And of course, Harry would expect him to fill it. Not consciously, of course, but it would be there. Right now, Harry missed them, but soon, a month from now or a year from now, Harry would ask him, _Don't ever leave me_, and that would be it.

Their relationship, this love of theirs, this situation; it was doomed and had been doomed from the start. How could Harry create a real relationship if, in the back of his head, there was always that fear, that horror, of the posibility of losing it all. It made a man clutch and grab and hold and protect, and you couldn't live or love another person that you had to clutch at them. Voldemort had not left Potter unscathed. He left no one unscathed, but maybe the Boy Who Lived got it the worst. Draco could never be his parents, could never be Sirius, and here was Harry, feigning and smiling his way through the day when suddenly it all just broke. Harry was a man holding it all in and how could Draco--

Draco slowly reached his arms around to hold him, but Harry wouldn't let himself cry anymore, not with Draco around, so Draco pulled him closer, and just let him sit, hoping that would be enough. He felt a deep melancholy, and looking ahead into the darkness of the kitchen, he sensed death. There had been a death here in this kitchen, the death of the possiblity of something more than this between them. They were both too damaged for that, and neither of them could heal the other. How long could they sustain this?

No, Draco thought, kissing the top of Harry's head; it didn't matter how long they could sustain it. What was important was now. Friendships came and went, people died and vanished, removed form their life, and of coursethere was horror there. But there was value in what they had right then and there, and that was all Draco needed.

"Shh," he said.

He had never comforted anyone before, but right now he didn't feel silly in the least.

He put Harry to bed, and then sat on the sofa in the dark living room, smoking cigarette after cigarette and looking out through the broken window at the streetlamps and rooftops beyond. He watched the smoke curl upwards through the orange light, and he thought about all the times Harry had almost died, or watched someone die. It didn't seem fair, really. Life should conspire to help a person like that live well, and live better, but it didn't.

He finished his last cigarette, picturing fights they would have in the future, knowing that some day he'd feel trapped by Harry's need. The cigarette tasted sharper than usual, and he stubbed it out, thinking he should maybe quit, or maybe turn into one of those casual smokers, who only yanked out a cigarette when they want to start a conversation with other smokers.

Later, he crawled into bed with Harry. It was warm, and it was pleasant, but it still took him a long time to fall asleep.

The next morning, an owl fluttered through the broken window and screeched so loudly Draco shot up in bed with a yelp. He slapped at the sheets, but there was no warm Harry next to him; the spot was empty. He slid out of bed, hearing activity in the kitchen. Putting on his black shirt, he heard Harry deal with the owl, and call his name. He rubbed his eyes, still groggy, moving out into the tiny, rundown kitchen, where Harry was making tea.

"Tea?" Harry asked brightly.

Draco stopped rubbing his eyes and regarded his lover intently. Harry had put back on his composure, slipping so easily back into the role of the good-natured, strong hero. It was that last year that did this to him, he knew; that last horrible year. "What did the owl want?" he asked. "Was it the Aurors again?"

"The owl was actually for you," Harry said, handing him the message and going back to frying up bread.

Draco read the letter, and started to laugh halfway through. He wanted to leap up into the sky and spin. "It's from the Ministry. Seems they read Mackey's interview with me; seems almost the lot of them did. There's an apology, and 'a strong desire to acquire [me] in [their] ranks next fiscal year'."

Harry was beaming. "Sounds brilliant."

Draco looked up at Harry suddenly, remembering the other night. He set the letter aside.

"What do they want you to do?"

"Go on down to the Ministry."

"Breakfast first?"

"I'll go tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? But--"

People died, Draco thought; they vanished, they went away, they drifted out of your life. There was no happily ever after, like they all thought they would get. But the transience of life only made the present more valuable. Relationships were made more special _because_ they couldn't last.

"I'd rather spend today with you," Draco said.

He had to use what time they had left.


	2. Chapter 2

1

Office parties of the wizarding world seemed like such anachronisms to Hermione. So much of her life growing up in Hogwarts, Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade gave her the impression that the wizarding world was conserving a sort of pseudo-eighteenth century lifestyle. However, despite the old brickstone building Ron worked in, and the fact that the balloons floating around the ceiling were ensorcelled rather than filled with helium, Hermione found the same bollocks, the same workplace politics as in Muggle offices. It was disillusioning.

Rufus Grandus was Ron's boss, a tall older man with a reddish face that kept contorting into mirthful expressions. "Oop," he was saying to her and Ron,"this your wife then, Weasley? Got a bun inna oven, then? That's grand, that is. The business always values its family men."

There it is, Hermione thought; that was the reason she and Ron paraded themselves like this in the office. They had to establish Ron as a up and coming father, a man who was young, certainly, but who was also a man of responsibility.

"Ron," she whispered, when Mr. Grandus stalked away, "my feet are nagging at me again. Spot a chair?"

"Over there," he whispered back. "Past the buffet. C'mon."

There was much to pass on the way over to the chair. There was Philip, who minced and twisted, and talked with his hands animatedly, in a voice that made it seem he wasn't sure if he wanted to come across as a queen or not. He was talking to Miss Laughton, who would be pretty if she lost some weight or put some effort into what she wore, and her dowdy appearance reminded Hermione of her fear of sharing a similar fate.

That will be me if I don't watch it, she thought; I'll be shoved into the corner of a lonely office, fat and frumpy, wielding more chins than brains.

But these were mean thoughts about someone else, and she banished them, instead focusing on the two designers standing by the buffet table, who were good at crafting moving paintings with their wands. In the designer field they were apparently hacks, but Hermione looked at their work and saw nothing wrong. Ron, who wrote copy better than any script-spell could, often worked closely with them, and Hermione eyed the pretty petite brunette with something approaching anxiety. Again she repressed the feeling. She had recently discovered she was the jealous type, and that was something she didn't like about herself.

Ginny had recently been a victim of a jealous boyfriend, with the relationship collapsing because of it. She had explained to Hermione: "Jealousy is where, in every situation there is the opposite sex, _you_ are the bad guy, _you _are the villain. Not the cute boy across the room who looks at you, but _you_, since you might have glanced in his direction. God, I hope Ron isn't the _j_ealous type, Hermione."

No, Ron wasn't, but Hermione _was_, and her fingers squeezed around her clutch tighter when the petite pretty one said hello to Ron as they passed by.

You will _not_ be a bitch, Hermione told herself.

She sat down and watched her husband go off to his bosses to ingratiate himself. That's it, love, she thought; get them hard at the thought of you. You're talented, so rub it in their faces.

Of _course_ Ron was talented. Every one of the Weasley family was startlingly talented in some way. George was so successful at business, just as he and Fred had been back in the day. Meanwhile, Ron could look at a product and craft a pitch so calculated it was sickening.

Hermione was not so talented. She wasn't published yet, and there were no openings at Hogwarts, nor any openings anywhere nearby. Those hoping to one day be a professor had to pass through a gauntlet of academic challenges, and if she could lock herself in a tower and do them all, she'd pass each test glowingly. But you had to work to support yourself, you had to apply to be an aide, and she had discovered life was not a paper, or a report, or research. She was just not quick enough or focused enough. Often she would catch herself thinking about something academic when she should be working. It was the first time she'd ever thought herself as slower than anyone else.

But she'd received an owl the other day saying her paper on magical diseases might be considered for a journal. If it were published-- Oh, if it were published...

And there was always the yearning for the kind of life that Harry wanted. With a start, she remembered the sensation of hurtling through a second-story window in Harry's arms, the fear she'd felt when first meeting Fenrir Greyback, of escaping death. But no... that sort of life was not something you could consider with a child in tow.

"You're Ron Weasley's wife, yeah?"

Dear god it was her, the petite pretty designer. What was her name? Something French? LaChampe? Bonita LaChampe? She had a London accent, though, so she couldn't be _too_ French.

"You're Bonita, right?" Hermione asked, smiling.

"Yes." Bonita replied. She was radiant and pale, with dark eyes and she was so _thin_. "How far along are you?"

"Sorry?"

"The baby."

"Oh! About seven months."

"Oh, so you're due _soon_, then, yeah? Ohh, that's so _exciting!_"

Rose's head was beginning to press against Hermione's bladder, but Hermione felt she kept her expression impressively unwavering. "We're both looking forward to it," she said.

Beyond Bonita, the other designer was holding a _Daily Prophet. _There was something about dark wizards in the headlines. Remembering the attack at Harry's apartment, Hermione peered past her, trying to make it out.

_Massacre at Muggle Restaurant: Seven Dark Wizards Dead,_

_Two Aurors Murdered._

Bonita had just asked her something. Hermione looked up. "Sorry?"

"I said, I bet it'll be a relief to just have the baby and get it all over with, yeah?"

Of course she would bet that. Bonita was young, and astonishingly slender, and talented, and had her whole career ahead of her. Hermione had the sudden urge to cry, but she quelled it, and just smiled and said, "Yes. Definitely."

2

The owl had a small crystal orb tied around its leg. Harry took the orb, gave the owl some change and opened the newly repaired window to let it fly out. He had seen these orbs before, had even received a couple, and he knew what to do. But there was first the situation of the young woman standing in his apartment.

He had stepped through the door carrying groceries and the mail, closing it and walking across the creaky wood floors to the kitchen table. She had come out of the bathroom into the kitchen, naked and dripping, reaching for a towel hanging across a chair.

They'd locked eyes, and for an insane moment Harry wondered if he had fallen into some horrible sitcom, and she was going to scream, and he was going to scream, and it was all going to culminate in some horrid laugh track.

She whipped up her wand and Accio'ed the towel to her. "Why aren't you looking away?" she spat.

"This is my _flat_, Pansy," he said. "What're you _doing_ here?"

But of course he knew. She had showed up on the doorsteps at some point and Draco had of course let her in, and had left her here when he'd left to go for his interview at the Ministry. Pansy Parkinson, the dark-eyed pixie from Hogwarts. Draco's towel was green, and it suited her, as the colour seemed to suit all Slytherin students.

"You know," she said, in her flat clipped voice, "I expected the great Harry Potter to afford a nicer place."

"Didn't Draco tell you?" he replied, sitting down in a chair next to the kitchen table. "I'm a hipster now. I romanticize the working class."

She pursed her lips, and for a moment her face seemed to reveal her embarrassment at being caught nude. "I'd forgotten the towel. I thought you'd be coming home later."

"You know, there's a spell for drying off."

"Have you ever cast it?"

"No."

"It dries out your skin too. There's no spell for moisturizing, and it strikes me as a little unfair."

"You take your wand into the shower?"

"I take my wand everywhere. What's that the owl gave you? That a Fortune-teller 5000?"

"You know, those Fortune-tellers are scams."

"I bet you know that better than anyone, considering George Weasley invented them."

"How long are you staying?"

"Draco hasn't told you?"

"Told me what?"

She smirked, and looked away. "I'll let him tell you then."

"Fine. Then excuse me for a second. I need to change."

"There's a spell for that too."

"I bet there is."

He went into the bedroom and shut the door, trying not to feel annoyed at Pansy Parkinson's sudden appearance in his flat. She was Draco's friend, and he knew how little of Draco's friends were around these days. He looked at the small orb in his hand, and lifted his wand.

He tapped it against the orb and said, "_Communicado._"

The orb swelled up to the size of a basketball. Two faces appeared within it, and to Harry's surprise they belonged to Glenda Monroe, the current acting administrator of the Ministry-grade Aurors, and Mad-Eye Moody. Mad-Eye Moody was his usual craggy-faced self, but Glenda Monroe was almost preternaturally beautiful, with soft features and red lips and sensual eyes. The haziness the orb gave the image enhanced the illusion that Harry was watching an old Hollywood film. The sight of Mad-Eye Moody was still a shock to Harry, since the man had died at Little Whinging. Apparently Moody had hobbled into the Auror's office a year later, without an explanation for his presence, and with a different eye in his socket. Of course he had resumed his job.

In an interview, he had only said, "What were you expecting, me lads? To STAY dead?"

"This is a message intended for Mr. Harry Potter," Monroe said, in her soft purring voice. "We wish for you to contact us as soon as possible. This is not, unfortunately, a response to your request for a job interview, but rather we wish to have you as a consultant, given your immense experience with dark wizardry." Her tone took on some concern and worry, something unusual for her. "Last night, someone detonated a spell in a Muggle restaurant, killing seven dark wizards spectacularly and traumatizing a number of Muggle customers. Two Aurors arrived to contain the situation, as well as to perform Memory Modification charms, but these two were murdered as well. No sign of the murderer."

Mad-Eye Moody's voice grumbled next: "We believe this to be a terrorist action, Potter. Might have some connection with the assassination attempt on _you_. We want you to come down and have a peek. Think you can manage?"

His door opened suddenly and Harry tapped the orb, ending the message. He glanced back, irritated to see Pansy Parkinson shaking a bottle of Schnapps.

"Am I interrupting something?" she asked.

"Yes, but it's all right." Harry was thinking about the message, and he shifted over to look at Pansy, rubbing his head, trying to make some sense of it. "Can I help you? Why are you opening the door when I told you I'm changing?"

"Fair trade. You saw _me_ in the buff. I'm a little disappointed in you." She waved the bottle. "Can I crack this thing open?"

"It's four in the afternoon."

"That's why I grabbed the Schnapps. Girly drinks in the day, bloke drinks in the evening, isn't that the rule?"

"How much is left?"

"Enough. I don't know. Half maybe?"

"Pour me one too then, won't you?"

As she vanished back into the kitchen, he turned back to look at the orb with a growing anger. His celebrity was once again backfiring on him. His tangle with the Death Eaters wasn't enough to net him a position as Auror, but it apparently was enough to let him pretend to be one without pay. He considered going on holiday and letting Mad-Eye Moody figure it out himself. If they wanted him to fight the good fight, they were going to have to give him a badge, not ring him up every time they wanted him to answer a riddle.

He glanced out the door at the hall, at the pile of Muggle mail on the kitchen counter. It seemed an awfully big pile. He knew Draco hardly ever got mail this way, and except for bills, Harry couldn't imagine who would send him anything.

"Orange juice, vodka, Schnapps," Pansy said, sprawling out in the kitchen chair with the drinks in front of her. "It's a summer drink, mostly, so let's just call it nostalgia for warmer weather."

He understood why Draco liked her, why they were friends. Pansy was the kind of coquettish, cynical intellectual Draco would find infinitely charming.

Harry stood there, looking at the drinks on the table, remembering what Pansy had shrieked in the Great Hall when Voldemort had demanded the students turn him over. "_He's right over there! Why doesn't someone just fucking grab him?!" _Or something like that.

"Can I ask you something?" he asked.

"Is it about Voldemort?"

"Yes it is."

She paused, looking down at her drink, a number of emotions flickering past her face. Then she said, "All right."

"Why did you support him? I mean, in his whole bid for power. I mean, with all the atrocities and abusing of power and the killings--"

"Well--" She thought for a moment, pursing her lips. "Well, for one I was seventeen, and in Hogwarts you weren't really exposed to all the atrocities. All you saw was just more shit about the enemies of the Dark Lord being, I don't know, quelled or dealt with, you know? It just made sense to us. Wizards have all this power, and they bury it all in this secrecy, this cowtowing to Muggles. I honestly thought the Dark Lord had it right a little bit, that he could have affected some great change in the world, and get rid of wars, poverty, over-industrialization." She looked up at him. "I don't know. I was a kid. Fuck, you were a kid too, but you were the one who was in the middle of it all. Obviously you knew more than any of us."

Harry had heard similar explanations before, dozens of them. None of them seemed to help, but he just nodded and took his drink. He leafed through the mail as he sipped it, and felt a package fall into his lap. Opening it, a video tape slid out.

A video tape. Not a DVD, not a Mini Disk, not a CD-ROM, not any technology available after the early 90s. A video tape. Harry _had_ a video player, a gift from Mr. Weasley. When Arthur Weasley had acquired a DVD Player, he'd lost interest in the old VCR and had given it to Harry. It was set up in the bedroom.

"What's that?" Pansy asked.

"It's a videotape," Harry said.

"Who's sending you videotapes?"

"I've honestly no idea."

The video tape had a label that read, in neatly lettered handwriting, _For Harry Potter._

"I think I know what that is," Pansy said.

"Yeah?"

"Oh yes." She smirked. "It's from a lonely woman who's heard of your famous story. She knows how much hardship you've gone through, and she knows she's the _only_ one capable of romancing you and mothering you back into the _pink_ of mental health. She figures the best way for you to realize how much you need her is to send you a scratchy video of her naked bits."

"Good lord, you really think so?"

"You _are_ the great and powerful Harry Potter, aren't you? Doesn't that entitle you to piles of home videos of middle aged tits?"

"At _least_ piles."

"Hordes?"

"I have to have _some_ reward, don't I?"

"We should write an angry letter. _Harry Potter's not getting the saggy nudity he most assuredly deserves._"

"I'll go fire this in and see which old bird has fallen in love with me."

"You'll have to tell me how it goes."

It took him a few minutes to get the television to work with the VCR; neither he nor Draco used either much, and they were both finicky old machines, both gifts from Mr. Weasley. Finally, he managed to get it working. The television flickered, and then showed the image of a handsome young man sitting primly in a chair in the center of the shot. He was wearing a white dress shirt, and his dark hair was long and feathered. He looked professionally good-looking, like he'd spent a lot of his free time making sure he looked put together. There was, however, something not entirely all there in his expression.

"Mr. Potter," the man said. "I'm certain this is the second message you've received today. I know the Aurors have been sending you orbs from time to time, using you as their pet consultant. This is because you are valuable, but I get the sense that you are not being treated _like_ you're valuable. I, however, know what you represent, what you have done, and what you are capable of. I believe you are someone who _is_ valuable, and that is why I'm appealing to you for help. I want you to join my cause, because it is noble, and because it is important. Mister Potter--"

Here, the young man paused, leaning forward in his chair for emphasis. "Mr. Potter, I_'m the one who murdered the Dark Wizards and the two Aurors_."

Harry stopped the tape. The television went as blank as his mind. He stood up and walked to the window, setting his drink down onto the bedside table. He needed to look out at the city, at the ugly buildings and the tree that grew too close to their flat. He needed to reaffirm that there was still a world out there, a real world, with Draco and Ron and Hermione.

After a moment he started the tape again.

"It's sickening, Harry Potter," the young man said. "I came from a family of a Muggle father and a witch mother. I've seen first hand the unfairness of the system. My mother breaks her arm, the nurse waves a wand and my mother leaves the medical hall within the first five minutes. My father breaks his leg, and he has to languish in a Muggle hospital, unable to do his job for weeks, because he is a Muggle and that is the Muggle's lot. My mother's appendix bursts and she presses a wand against her side and says a quick charm. The appendix shrivels away, no harm, no foul. My father gets cancer and--"

Here the young man broke off, close to rage now. He visibly calmed himself down and looked back at the camera. "If Muggles witness a wizard performing magic, the Aurors will come in and alter these Muggles' minds, against their wishes, all to keep this precious masquerade intact. Memory Modification charms trample the rights of Muggles, of human beings like you and me. Magic could be helping the world now, the _whole_ world, and instead we use it to control the Muggle slave class. But you and I, Mr. Potter, you and I and the others I have won to my cause, we could blow the whole thing wide open. We could reveal to the Muggle world magic on such a scale that the Ministry could _never_ cover it up. What we will be doing is ending _lies_, Mr. Potter, for truth is something precious, and something we should protect. As someone who has fought for truth and the rights of men in the past, I know you and I will get along."

He shifted in his seat and leaned in, looking pointedly at the camera. "I wish to meet you. Come to the river by the Red Nose cafe at eight o' clock tonight. We will have much to discuss."

The image flickered, and then ended. Harry turned the television off and leaned back. This was, he thought, the same old nonsense. It was all just the same nonsense.

No, he thought; I'm not going to be at the center of craziness again, like all of my Hogwarts days. If I'm thrown onto the field, it's going to be as an Auror. Right now, I'm just a bloke, and I don't need to get involved.

He ejected the tape and tossed it into the bin. He hesitated. The tape was, essentially, a confession of murder. He should turn it over to the Aurors. But if he did it himself they would rope him into the investigation. He would send an owl over with it instead and vanish from London for a few days, to make both the Aurors and this lunatic feel his absence. Harry Potter wasn't going to be another goddamn commodity.

He picked it up from the bin and set it aside. Moving out into the kitchen, he leaned against the doorframe, weighing his options.

Pansy was watching him. "Was it a naked woman?" she asked.

"I think..." He looked up at her. "I think I'd like to take a train somewhere. To go on holiday."

She smiled brightly at him. "_Well_," she said. "I think this is your lucky day then."

3

Pansy had shown up early that morning, before the sun had risen. Harry had still been sleeping, and Draco was up, dressed and standing out on the fire escape, silently smoking a cigarette and thinking about the job interview later in the day.

She had emerged from the shadows, carrying a small overnight bag, dressed in a green skirt and dark blouse, her dark hair falling over her deep, brown eyes. She had, moreso than in her Hogwarts days, a melancholy about her that at once made her seem older than she was.

"Draco," she said softly.

"No fucking way," he hissed to the morning darkness.

Soon they were sitting together on the railing of the fire escape, sharing a cigarette and looking off at the first glow of sunrise. Pansy felt drunk on his presence, as if the absence of him in her life had built a void that he was suddenly and overwhelmingly filling. Not for the first time in her life she wondered if maybe she _was_ in love with him.

"You're not mad that I tracked you down?" she asked.

He looked at her, surprised. "Why on earth would I be mad?"

"Figured with all the fame, you might want some privacy."

"Yeah, well." He smirked. "_You're_ allowed. You dropped off the map a bit, didn't you?"

"Sort of the reason I came to find you."

"Oh?"

"My great-aunt died recently. She owned a home on Anglesey, and I'd been caring for it while she was sick, so yeah, I vanished for a bit. Now I'm a lonely young witch who owns some property on a island."

"She willed it to you?"

"Well, if she hadn't, I probably would have forged the sodding will myself. I put a _lot_ of effort into that place while she was an invalid."

"Is it nice?"

"I like the seclusion. Makes me feel like a Virginia Woolf type, out by the waves with a drink in one hand and a book in the other." She shook her head. "But it does seem like I'm all alone and all of our friends have vanished."

"It does, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, well, maybe Salazar went through the same thing. Maybe it's what happens to a Slytherin. But, listen, you're the closest thing to a best friend I have."

"I thought I was your best friend."

"You're my ex. That changes the dynamic a little."

"Only if you want it to."

"I want you to come visit me for a little bit. It'll make me feel a bit aristocratic. It'll be like in the olden days, when the rich woman puts up her friends in her huge house."

"Wouldn't be hard to go on holiday, being unemployed."

"It'll be like old times, Draco." She leaned forward and shrugged. "Except, only this time you'll be bringing along your boyfriend Potter. We can make remarks about him behind his back. You'll be good at it; you're probably pretty intimately familiar with his back by now."

"Jesus, Pansy."

"I assume you're the top."

Draco took the cigarette back from her, and looked out at the city. "A holiday with you would be nice."

"Talk to Harry. I'll book the tickets."

In the distance they heard sirens. Draco thought about lounging about in an island home for a few days, listening to the waves instead of listening to London creak and snarl at them at all hours.

A holiday would be nice and dull. At least, he was sure it would be dull, even with Potter around.

------

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